


Liars and Cheats

by gentlezombie



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, M/M, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-20 17:05:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17026680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlezombie/pseuds/gentlezombie
Summary: Dramatic feelings after the destruction of Kirkwall.





	Liars and Cheats

**Author's Note:**

> Just little something because my happy hippie Hawke was feeling rather dramatic after the first playthrough.
> 
> Written ages ago, reposted from LJ.

"You know, I never liked that scarf you gave me." The first words Hawke had spoken since they'd left the Gallows, left Kirkwall to burn.

"The ocean-green one, with gold thread? The one I gave you for our anniversary?" A pause. "You're lying."

"I know."

Hawke was lying about other things too - I can't love someone like you, I don't ever want to see you again - yet here they were, aboard Isabela's ship, together. Anders stood at his side in his old threadbare coat, where he belonged, although he had no right, not anymore. It hurt Hawke to look at him, so he didn't.

He remembered a hundred little kindnesses, romantic gestures he didn't know how to return but had appreciated all the same with a sort of embarrassed pleasure. The worried looks he got before yet another crazy mission, the nimble fingers that tightened the straps of his armour in any case. Lying together on a narrow bed on a cold morning, too entangled to feel the chill, Anders's fingers sending sparks of heat along his spine under the blanket. His lover's face, smudged with ink from the way he used to poke at his lip with the sharp end of the quill, or smoothed over in sleep, the lines of laughter and worry all the more pronounced, or transformed by the dark joy of battle into something dangerous, curses spilling from his lips. His lover's face in pain and in pleasure and any combination of the two, opened up.

Hawke didn't even know his real name. The realisation came late, like all the unpleasant truths he was so very good at avoiding.

The time for avoidance was over. Even now, while his first reaction was to recoil in bitterness and fear, he knew he had made his choice a long time ago. He was bitter for the way things had turned out, for the mindless hate and needless slaughter that had swept Anders with them. He was afraid because he'd had a taste of just how much he was willing to forgive.

Hawke glanced at the man beside him, blond hair streaked with ash and blood, eyes dull and brown and lost now without the spark of Vengeance or Justice, and for all his anger he couldn't find it in himself to hate.

He turned away, his boot-heels clanking against the polished deck in way that sounded final. He heard a sigh behind him, held breath escaping involuntarily.

"You coming or what?"

Hawke tossed the words over his shoulder carelessly because that was what had gotten him this far, for good or ill.

He didn't hold out his hand, but when hesitant fingers touched his wrist, he knew his own grip to be bruising as he led them below-decks.

In the distance over the waves, the faint orange glow was Kirkwall, burning.


End file.
